At the Save HUD 202 Rally, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), ranking member of the House Financial Services Committee, said President Donald Trump’s budget proposal would slash essential housing programs for the elderly through the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
According to her prepared remarks, Trump’s budget proposal would:
- Cut nearly $2 billion in funding for public housing
- Cut nearly $1 billion in funding for Section 8 housing choice vouchers
- Eliminate the Choice Neighborhoods Initiative
- Eliminate the Community Development Block Grant program
- Eliminate the HOME Investment Partnerships program
- Underfund Section 202 and Section 8 Project-Based Rental Assistance
Waters added that the budget contained no new funding to create new housing for seniors.
“Many of these programs on the chopping block are essential to our nation’s low-income older adults,” Waters said. “In particular, the Section 202 Supportive Housing for the Elderly program is the only HUD program solely dedicated to providing affordable housing for low-income elderly households, serving approximately 400,000 elderly families.”
Waters added that over half of the recipients of public housing, and Section 8 Tenant Based and Project Based Rental Assistance, are elderly or disabled, and that the latest Census Bureau data projected that there will be 79 million seniors in 2035, twice as many as in 2015.
“And while housing is the cornerstone of the health and well-being of senior households, the foreclosure crisis has had an especially devastating impact on older Americans,” Waters said. “It left too many senior homeowners facing foreclosure, with underwater mortgages, or with wealth-draining reverse mortgages. These households lost their ability to age in place, and they lost equity in their homes that represented economic security in retirement.”
The housing crisis also pushed many older households into the rental market.
“In the face of rising rents, for older renters, access to federally subsidized housing is key to financial stability,” Waters said. “Unfortunately, of the 3.9 million seniors eligible for assisted housing, only 1.4 million (36 percent) of very low-income persons aged 62 and older receive the rental assistance that they so desperately need. Moreover, nearly half of all seniors live with incomes below 200 percent of the poverty line, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. And elderly people of color experience poverty at much higher rates.”
Waters argued that instead of investing in affordable housing for older homeowners, Trump was proposing to cut the support that does exist. Waters called for an increase in investment for senior housing.